


Live to Tell the Secret

by westwingfanfictioncentral_archivist



Category: The West Wing
Genre: Episode Tag, Episode: s02e20 The Fall's Gonna Kill You
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-05-01
Updated: 2003-05-01
Packaged: 2019-05-31 06:19:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15113576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/westwingfanfictioncentral_archivist/pseuds/westwingfanfictioncentral_archivist
Summary: "A man can tell a thousand lies/I've learned my lesson well/Hope I live to tell the secret I have learned/'Til then it will burn inside of me..."





	Live to Tell the Secret

**Author's Note:**

> A copy of this work was once archived at National Library, a part of the [ West Wing Fanfiction Central](https://fanlore.org/wiki/West_Wing_Fanfiction_Central), a West Wing fanfiction archive. More information about the Open Doors approved archive move can be found in the [announcement post](http://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/8325).

**Live to Tell the Secret**  
**by:** Kasey

**Character(s):** CJ, Josh, Abbey, Sam, Toby, Leo, Jed  
**Category(s):** POST-EP: TFGKY, Gen Songfic  
**Rating:** TEEN  
**Disclaimer:** Characters belong to ABS, song is from Madonna - amazing what songfics one can come up with while driving home late at night and listening to the radio. :-)  
**Summary:** "A man can tell a thousand lies/I've learned my lesson well/Hope I live to tell the secret I have learned/'Til then it will burn inside of me..." 

It was cold, CJ thought as she walked toward her apartment. Colder than usual for early May. Made her wish she was back home in California - it wasn't this chilly except during the winter. 

That wasn't the only reason she wished she was back in California. Actually, she was starting to wish she was anywhere but DC. 

She wasn't a spin-doctor, she never had been, and she knew how to choose her words around the Press so as to get the point across with minimal deviance from that point, but other times and other kinds of wording? 

She'd never thought about her precise wording when speaking to the president. There was a formality, to be sure, but she didn't worry about "should" versus "need to" and physicals...God, she thought, physicals used to be just a formality - that's all the more they were ever supposed to be. Now they were turning into a debacle - she was in trouble, the doctors were in trouble, Abbey was in trouble... 

She didn't wanna go back to the White House for a long, long time. She would have to face the press in the morning and try not to let what she knew show on her face. 

She felt somehow, that she LOOKED different. That EVERYTHING looked different. 

Everything WAS different. 

> _I have a tale to tell_  
>  Sometimes it gets so hard  
> To hide it well  
> I was not ready for the fall  
> Too blind to see the writing on the wall

Back down the sidewalk a little ways, Josh started back toward the White House and found himself staring up at the OEOB. The Vice President was probably in his office, working late...plotting his campaign strategy and figuring out how to pseudo-hide what he was doing. Hoynes, while many things, was neither stupid nor ignorant. 

Josh, meanwhile, couldn't help but think: He had left Hoynes for Bartlet. Basically left Hoynes almost dead in the water without a purpose or direction or top advisor...why? 

Because Bartlet was supposed to be the real thing - dammit, he was supposed to be REAL, he was supposed to be the GOOD guy, not another sleazy politician bent on winning so badly that they hid everything they could. 

He wasn't about to jump ship again. That would just be...it'd be wrong, not to mention a very dangerous sign that Bartlet was up to things so bad that even Josh Lyman, Compulsive Fixer, wouldn't be caught near that campaign. 

No, he thought. He'd stay on, for better or for worse, if only because it was the right thing to do. And Bartlet WAS a good man...he really was, he'd done great things for the country. 

So the question became: Was the disease more important than 3.8 million new jobs? 

Sighing and not wanting to ponder that question, he jammed his hands in his pockets and went through the gate to the White House. 

> _A man can tell a thousand lies_  
>  I've learned my lesson well  
>  Hope I live to tell the secret I have learned  
>  ’Til then it will burn inside of me 

In the Residence, Abbey sat quietly in the bedroom, trying to concentrate on her book but instead thinking the same thought over and over again: 

It's all over now. 

To be perfectly honest, she'd never wanted him to run in the first place, especially not for a second term, that had been the point of the deal. Which he'd promptly broken after two-odd years. 

Her husband the jackass. Hardly a rarity anymore. 

But in the end, it would be her who would also be burned in effigy. An accessory to a conspiracy. The one non-politician involved - but what a key role THAT would be. Making all the headlines. "First Lady Guilty of Aiding and Abetting" - wouldn't that look good on a resume? 

Dammit, Jed, she thought. Why couldn't you just have told Leo you weren't gonna run again? Made some formal announcement so Hoynes could do whatever the hell he wanted and we could've gone HOME to Manchester in peace instead of now going off to the races yet again only this time not only are you campaigning yourself to death, you're being slaughtered by Congress at the same time! 

> _I know where beauty lives_  
>  I've seen it once  
>  I know the one she gives  
>  The light that you could never see  
>  It shines inside  
>  You can't take that from me.

He was too stunned to really say anything in Leo's office. When he'd returned to his own office, he'd come dangerously close to smashing his hand through his window in a Josh-like fashion. 

But in the end, he just sat at his desk, staring at, of all things, the Newton's Cradle. 

It was vaguely comforting, he supposed - he'd had it almost as long as he'd been in politics. Josh had given it to him when they were Congressional Aides. He was but a lowly communications intern and Josh, a big-shot, had befriended him and said "You'll be a great speechwriter, Sam, I just know it." 

Josh was a good guy. Always had been. A little overly tenacious at times, perhaps, but a good guy and a good friend - one always needed a friend in DC lest they go mad. 

Which wasn't out of the question anymore, friends or no friends. 

The President lied, he was sick and he'd lied and now they were gonna be going public and they'd already set up a war room down in the basement almost as far from civilization as Ainsley's office and he was the last to know and the President was sick... 

He was supposed to be the real thing. Jed Bartlet-...Josh and his damn poker face... 

Lies, Sam supposed, were universal. Regardless of what profession he was in, he would get lied to and shouted down and used for public face - with the Indio, with a case he'd done at Dewey Ballatine where he'd been placed unknowingly as second chair simply for his pretty face... 

With the President. 

This was it. No more politics. After this, he wouldn't stay in politics, it was...too cut-throat. Too full of bullshit and lies... 

Then again...he might be dead in politics after this. 

> _A man can tell a thousand lies_  
>  I've learned my lesson well  
> Hope I live to tell the secret I have learned  
> ’Til then it will burn inside of me  
> The truth is never far behind  
> You kept it hidden well  
> If I live to tell the secret I knew then  
> Will I ever have the chance again?

In the office next door, Toby looked through the small window to try and see how his deputy was doing - while he'd made certain Sam know he was in his own office if there was the desire to talk to anyone, Sam had not come to see him and had instead remained solitary in his own office. 

Not that Toby blamed him - when he'd found out, he'd felt pretty damn betrayed. And especially what with Sam knowing last...he wouldn't have trusted anyone at that point, probably. 

He didn't trust anyone still. 

He could get out - he knew he could get out, he knew that option was open. He could get out and leave all the crap behind him and go somewhere and make more money than he was making and have less problems than he was having and lose a lot less than he was about to lose. 

But it was the WHITE HOUSE. The Gold Nugget of politics - he had won his first ever campaign and had won it on a come-from-behind Presidential victory to be White House Communications Director for a damn good Democratic President. 

He couldn't jump ship. 

Besides - they needed him to start fixing the crisis. 

> _If I ran away_  
>  I'd never have the strength  
> To go very far  
> How would they hear  
> The beating of my heart?  
> Will it grow cold?  
> This secret that I hide  
> Will I grow old?  
> How will they hear?  
> When will they learn?  
> How will they know?

He wasn't as trusting as the deputies he'd been telling all week about the shitstorm that was about to hit; He'd been both in politics and alive long enough to know that everyone lied about something - tax returns or drug use or illness...the candidates had to run for things in order to get the opportunity to do good things for the people who elected them so they would be re-elected so they could do more good things... 

It was a vicious circle. 

And while Leo wasn't as naive about honesty as some of them - Sam especially - he himself had still felt betrayed when he learned of the MS, only not because the President had lied to America. 

Jed had lied to him, to *him* of all people. 

And then finding out and being outed on the other thing and the State of the Union and the wild rumours about his only daughter and the Deputy Communications Director... 

He wasn't sure how he'd been able to keep the knowledge to himself for so long without exploding from the sheer magnitude of it all. 

> _A man can tell a thousand lies_  
>  I've learned my lesson well  
> Hope I live to tell the secret I have learned  
> 'Til then it will burn inside of me

He'd never meant for it to go so far. 

That was all Jed could offer them as a consolation - he had never intended for it to go that far. 

But who knew he would win? 

That's what you got, he supposed, for not telling your staff that you didn't actually *WANT* to be President. Just like what you got for forgetting to tell them "one term"...or forgetting to tell your wife or the Vice President that it was gonna be two terms... 

He never meant for it to go so far - he never wanted this for all of them... 

> _The truth is never far behind_  
>  You kept it hidden well  
> If I live to tell the secret I knew then  
> Will I ever have the chance again?


End file.
